Category: Pacific Northwest economy

The Oregon Office of Economic Analysis has produced this nifty chart to track how the state has recovered from the depths of the Great Recession using 39 separate indicators. As the chart shows, Oregon has recovered 100 percent in such areas as total jobs, state gross domestic product and exports. On the other hand, like…

As the map shows, the Northwest turned in very different results in personal income growth for the third quarter. Washington was hot. The other states not so much. The report was released earlier this month from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Looking at sectors, Washington had the biggest jump in information earnings at 5.5…

Growth in per-capita personal income (PCPI) for Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue slowed to 1.1 percent last year after turning in a blistering 6.3 percent rise in 2012. We ranked 223 out of about 370 metros, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The national average was a 2 percent increase. Still, at $55,190 we were well above…

First the good news: Washington’s median household income remains above the national average. The bad: It barely moved from 2012 to 2013. This information comes from a Census Bureau data dump today that also showed Seattle with the largest rent increase among major cities. That fits because Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue saw its median household income rise…

Gross domestic product for Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue totaled nearly $285 billion in 2013, making us the 11th largest metro in the nation by output. Growth was also relatively strong at 2.4 percent. By comparison, GDP adjusted for inflation for all 381 metro areas in the nation was only 1.7 percent. Still. it was slower than the 4.7 percent…

Logging is the most legacy of the Pacific Northwest’s legacy industries, but it’s still here, especially thanks to the appetite from Asia. According to a recent report by the North American Wood Fiber Review, North American log exports in the first quarter were 14 percent higher than the same period in 2013. The U.S. Northwest…

The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis today released its first deep dig into state-by-state personal consumption expenditures going back to 1997. Washington turns in the strong performance one would expect from a prosperous state with a diverse economy. For example, per-capita expenditures here grew 3.6 percent from 2011 to 2012 vs. the national average of…

Weather guru Cliff Mass made a case last week on his blog that the Northwest “will be one of the best places to live as the earth warms. A potential climate refuge.” There’s an overwhelming consensus among the scientists who are actually experts in climate that climate change is real, humans are heavily causing it,…

Last week, I reported on how the region’s exports seem to be performing (very well) through May of this year. Now we have the official trade data for last year from the International Trade Administration of the Commerce Department. Washington clocked in $81.6 billion in exports compared with $75.7 billion in 2012. The nearly 8…

To the ongoing argument/search to understand how American opportunity has changed in recent decades, I recommend a new report from the groups Measure of America and Opportunity Nation. They take 16 metrics from 1970 to 2010 to give a deeper understanding of where the nation has made gains or faced headwinds. The Historical Report Opportunity Score…